What happened
On 30 June 1764, near Langogne, a fourteen-year-old shepherdess, Jeanne Boulet, was killed – the first known victim of “the Beast.” Over the following months the mountainous province of Gévaudan saw dozens of attacks, mostly on women and children watching livestock. Witnesses described an animal larger than a wolf, with reddish fur, a dark stripe along its back and a long tail. Newspapers across Europe wrote about the monster, and King Louis XV sent dragoons, famous wolf hunters and finally his own gun-bearer François Antoine, who in September 1765 killed a huge wolf. But the attacks resumed. On 19 June 1767 a local hunter, Jean Chastel, shot an animal in the Sogne d'Auvers woods that was taken to be the Beast – and the attacks stopped. Estimates of the dead range from about 60 to more than 100.
Witnesses
Survivors of attacks, villagers, parish priests who kept burial registers, Captain Duhamel's dragoons, the royal huntsman François Antoine and Jean Chastel; the case was widely reported in the press, including the “Gazette de France.”
Explanations and hypotheses
Most historians believe large wolves – possibly several animals – were responsible, at a time when wolf attacks on people were not rare in France. Because descriptions did not match a typical wolf, hypotheses arose about a wolf-dog hybrid or even an escaped exotic animal such as a lion; none has hard evidence. Local people saw the Beast as a werewolf or a punishment from God, and its legend lives on in the Margeride region today.
Disputed A likely explanation exists, but some of the facts are still disputed.
Sources
- Jay M. Smith, Monsters of the Gévaudan: The Making of a Beast (Harvard University Press, 2011)
- Smithsonian Magazine – The Beast of Gévaudan terrorized the French countryside (2017)
- Skeptoid – Hunting the Beast of Gevaudan
More: Wikipedia (pl) Wikipedia (en)